The Moral Sweet Spot

Abstract

Social capital seems to make people happy. Because of this, it can be important for utilitarian ethics. In this chapter, I describe some of the social science findings with respect to social capital, happiness and well-being. For these purposes, the terms happiness and well-being are used interchangeably. Subjective well-being refers to a person’s own appraisal of their happiness and well-being. It turns out that social relations are important, not only because people are happier when they have good, meaningful ties with others, but also because of the phenomenon of emotional contagion. Happiness spreads through social networks; so too for other emotions such as depression. Social capital may be the moral sweet spot, an effective mechanism for maximizing happiness, overriding self-interest and overcoming homophily — social capital’s dark side.KeywordsSocial CapitalNational CultureHarm PrincipleGlobal CultureFemale Genital CuttingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.